Call for nursing workforce expansion backed

2018/01/06

Liz McAnulty, Chair of the Patients Association, said: “We welcome today’s report by the Health Committee, and its call to expand the nursing workforce ‘at scale and pace’.

“The report sets out clearly the barriers to maintaining an appropriately sized nursing workforce, and we recognise nurses’ concerns that current pressures within the NHS, including but not limited to the workforce shortage, mean that they are not always able to deliver care to patients at the standard they would like to. We have seen in the Francis Report and elsewhere that inadequate nursing levels compromise the quality of patients’ care.

“The NHS faces the twin problems of inadequate funding to hire more nurses even if they were available, and a lack of available nurses even if funding were available to pay for them. Decisive action is needed on both fronts, simultaneously.”

Notes to Editors:

Written evidence to the inquiry by Sir Robert Francis, President of the Patients Association, can be read here.